Fastly Case Studies Ticketmaster's Digital Transformation: Migrating to Fastly's Edge Cloud Platform

	Ticketmaster's Digital Transformation: Migrating to Fastly's Edge Cloud Platform Fastly

Ticketmaster's Digital Transformation: Migrating to Fastly's Edge Cloud Platform

Fastly

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Middleware & Microservices Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries	Transportation
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Last Mile Delivery Time Sensitive Networking
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	Ticketmaster, a global leader in event ticket sales, faced a significant challenge in modernizing their tech stack to improve user experience and stay ahead of the competition. With over 40 years in the business and having acquired numerous ticketing businesses, Ticketmaster had 30-40 different ticketing platforms, each with its unique inventory and customer base. The company had been using a legacy Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider for over 15 years, which had become increasingly challenging to manage due to its complexity and the undocumented rules built over the years. The cost of delivery on their CDN provider was expanding, and the black-box nature of their legacy CDN required many professional services hours to configure, update, and manage. This made it difficult for the team to implement changes quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, the company had to support the needs of 16 different product teams within Ticketmaster, making the situation even more complex. Read More
About Customer	Ticketmaster is a global leader in event ticket sales, with fans purchasing more than 500 million tickets annually for concerts, sporting events, theater, and more. The company has been in the ticket sales business for over 40 years, evolving from a time when tickets were bought at a desk in a mall to today's world of mobile payments and digital tickets. Over the years, Ticketmaster has acquired one to three ticketing businesses each year, resulting in 30-40 different ticketing platforms under their umbrella today, each with its own unique inventory and customer base. The company has a commitment to improving user experience and staying ahead of the competition by modernizing their tech stack. Read More
Solution	To address these challenges, Ticketmaster decided to migrate from their legacy CDN provider to Fastly's edge cloud platform technology. The decision was driven by Fastly's low barrier to entry and the flexibility of its modular design. The migration, initially estimated to take 12 months, was completed in just three months, thanks to the ease of use of the Fastly platform and the direct collaboration between Fastly support and Ticketmaster developers on Slack. Fastly's platform empowered the developers at Ticketmaster to make changes, rollback quickly, and configure themselves, providing a level of flexibility and control that their legacy CDN could not offer. The platform's feature-richness and modular design enabled Ticketmaster's content delivery/infrastructure team to support the varied delivery and security needs of 16 different business units. Fastly's real-time log streaming feature, which uses the syslog format, made it easy for Ticketmaster's different business units to integrate their logs with tools like Splunk and BigQuery. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Middleware & Microservices

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Transportation

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Last Mile Delivery

Time Sensitive Networking

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

Ticketmaster, a global leader in event ticket sales, faced a significant challenge in modernizing their tech stack to improve user experience and stay ahead of the competition. With over 40 years in the business and having acquired numerous ticketing businesses, Ticketmaster had 30-40 different ticketing platforms, each with its unique inventory and customer base. The company had been using a legacy Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider for over 15 years, which had become increasingly challenging to manage due to its complexity and the undocumented rules built over the years. The cost of delivery on their CDN provider was expanding, and the black-box nature of their legacy CDN required many professional services hours to configure, update, and manage. This made it difficult for the team to implement changes quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, the company had to support the needs of 16 different product teams within Ticketmaster, making the situation even more complex.

About Customer

Ticketmaster is a global leader in event ticket sales, with fans purchasing more than 500 million tickets annually for concerts, sporting events, theater, and more. The company has been in the ticket sales business for over 40 years, evolving from a time when tickets were bought at a desk in a mall to today's world of mobile payments and digital tickets. Over the years, Ticketmaster has acquired one to three ticketing businesses each year, resulting in 30-40 different ticketing platforms under their umbrella today, each with its own unique inventory and customer base. The company has a commitment to improving user experience and staying ahead of the competition by modernizing their tech stack.

Solution

To address these challenges, Ticketmaster decided to migrate from their legacy CDN provider to Fastly's edge cloud platform technology. The decision was driven by Fastly's low barrier to entry and the flexibility of its modular design. The migration, initially estimated to take 12 months, was completed in just three months, thanks to the ease of use of the Fastly platform and the direct collaboration between Fastly support and Ticketmaster developers on Slack. Fastly's platform empowered the developers at Ticketmaster to make changes, rollback quickly, and configure themselves, providing a level of flexibility and control that their legacy CDN could not offer. The platform's feature-richness and modular design enabled Ticketmaster's content delivery/infrastructure team to support the varied delivery and security needs of 16 different business units. Fastly's real-time log streaming feature, which uses the syslog format, made it easy for Ticketmaster's different business units to integrate their logs with tools like Splunk and BigQuery.

Impact #1	The migration to Fastly's edge cloud platform has resulted in significant operational benefits for Ticketmaster. The platform's ease of use and flexibility have empowered Ticketmaster's developers, enabling them to make changes, rollback quickly, and configure themselves. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the time required to implement changes. The feature-richness and modular design of Fastly's platform have enabled Ticketmaster's content delivery/infrastructure team to support the varied delivery and security needs of 16 different business units. The real-time log streaming feature has improved visibility into logs, helping the team maintain a focus on performance and resolve issues faster. The shared Slack channels with Fastly have facilitated easy access to support and fostered collaborative conversations, making the job easier for the team at Ticketmaster.

Impact #1

The migration to Fastly's edge cloud platform has resulted in significant operational benefits for Ticketmaster. The platform's ease of use and flexibility have empowered Ticketmaster's developers, enabling them to make changes, rollback quickly, and configure themselves. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the time required to implement changes. The feature-richness and modular design of Fastly's platform have enabled Ticketmaster's content delivery/infrastructure team to support the varied delivery and security needs of 16 different business units. The real-time log streaming feature has improved visibility into logs, helping the team maintain a focus on performance and resolve issues faster. The shared Slack channels with Fastly have facilitated easy access to support and fostered collaborative conversations, making the job easier for the team at Ticketmaster.

Benefit #1	Migration from legacy CDN to Fastly was completed in 3 months, significantly faster than the initially estimated 12 months.
Benefit #2	Cost savings of 50% were achieved compared to their legacy CDN.
Benefit #3	Significant savings in developer hours for management of their content delivery needs.

Benefit #1

Migration from legacy CDN to Fastly was completed in 3 months, significantly faster than the initially estimated 12 months.

Benefit #2

Cost savings of 50% were achieved compared to their legacy CDN.

Benefit #3

Significant savings in developer hours for management of their content delivery needs.

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Overview

Ticketmaster's Digital Transformation: Migrating to Fastly's Edge Cloud Platform

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit